Blog Post

It’s official: Netflix will launch in Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg later this year. The video service announced the expansion into continental Europe late Tuesday, but didn’t give an exact launch date, or details on pricing or catalog. From Netflix’s press release:

“Upon launch, broadband users in these countries can subscribe to Netflix and instantly watch a curated selection of Hollywood, local and global TV series and movies, including critically-acclaimed Netflix original series, whenever and wherever they like on TVs, tablets, phones, game consoles and computers.“

This will be Netflix’s first major international expansion in two years. The company launched the UK and Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in 2012, but only added the Netherlands to that list in 2013. By year’s end, Netflix is going to be available in 47 countries around the world.

International expansions are coming at a cost for Netflix, as the company needs to spend money for local content and advertising. However, strong international growth has helped Netflix to offset some of those costs in recent months, and executives said during the company’s most recent earnings call that they expect Netflix to be profitable in existing international markets by the end of the year.

I love the “currated selection” comment. I live in the Netherlands and Netflix is a waste of time here due to the crippling licencing conditons meaning there is only a fraction of the content available on US Netflix.